Development

Taking the Next Step in Refugee Aid

February 18, 2012 by Emily Ginsberg

The word “refugee” usually conjures up images of teeming tent camps in barren fields, makeshift communities kept far from the rest of society. But there is a growing population of displaced people around the world who have relocated to cities in refugee recipient countries – and who have no foreseeable plans for returning to their [...]

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An Interview with Alec Ross, State Department Senior Advisor for Innovation

December 3, 2011 by Meghan Healy Luecke
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Alec Ross joined the State Department in April 2009 after coordinating hundreds of policy advisers for the Obama campaign. This month, he spoke with us about his job, the limitations of new media tools for governance, and how the Arab Spring is changing 21st century statecraft.

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Beyond the Burka

December 2, 2011 by Lisa De Bode
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Saudi women’s vote is the result of a decade-long battle for political participation. Contrary to Western perception, they waged this battle unfettered by the burka.

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The Millennium Development Goals and Fragile States: Focusing on What Really Matters

January 20, 2011 by David Carment and Yiagadeesen Samy

Fragile states account for roughly 15 percent of the world population and are far from achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). David Carment and Yiagadeesen Samy, of Carleton University, believe that the recent United Nations Summit, intended to evaluate progress toward achieving the MDGs, was a missed opportunity to focus attention on fragile and conflictaffected states. The authors argue that unless—and until—the international community realizes that fragile and conflict-affected states require the most effort, attaining the MDGs by the 2015 target date will be difficult.

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The Education of Poverty: Rebuilding Haiti’s School System after its “Total Collapse”

January 20, 2011 by Brendan McNulty

The January 2010 earthquake in Haiti devastated its already weak primary and secondary education system. Brendan McNulty, a fellow at the Inter-American Development Bank, discusses the imperative to establish a functioning education system and explores how the earthquake exacerbated perennial challenges to the Haitian education system, while also perhaps offering some hope. He analyzes reconstruction efforts involving the Government of Haiti and such organizations as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, arguing that an education system premised on local ownership and focused on sustainability is Haiti’s best hope.

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International Engagement: A High Cost in Domestic “Optics”?

November 10, 2010 by Elise Crane

Frank Rich’s November 6th New York Times column (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/opini … ef=general) deplored President Obama’s trip to India as a tremendous domestic PR failure in the wake of his midterm “shellacking”. Rich painted the president as either oblivious—or indifferent—to the “optics” of his decision to visit the very country that, due to outsourcing, many see as the [...]

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